Evelyn Nesbit: Vaudeville and Performance

"Yes, that's right. He put me on a velvet swing...

Harry's in trouble, Stanny's in heaven, and Evelyn is in Vaudeville!

And it's the crime of the century, making the world go 'whee!' Evelyn gets publicity... you love the girl on the swing."

(From "Crime of the Century")

"In Vaudeville, there is always something for everybody, just as in every state and city in every country and town in our democratic country, there is opportunity for everybody, a chance for all."

(E.F Albee; Variety in 1923)

Evelyn and Vaudeville

From The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville by Anthony Slide (on Evelyn Nesbit):

"Evelyn Nesbit Thaw became more than a mere vaudevillian; she was the "freak" act of all time, proving Willie Hamerstein's claim that vaudeville audiences would pay good money to see newspaper headlines, particularly when sex and violence were involved."

Nesbit was once offered $3000 a week for involvement in Vaudeville, but she declined stating, "I will not consider the Vaudeville stage under any circumstance." By 1913, that changed as Harry Thaw's mother was determined that Nesbit "return to the gutter from which she was sure she had come" and Nesbit was also having financial problems. William Hammerstein booked her in the Victoria Theatre in New York at a start rate of $1,500. For a four week run, her publicity earned the company $100,000 in profit, establishing Nesbit as the single biggest drawing card in Vaudeville theatre.

Her vaudeville act was her first appearance on Broadway in ten years and consisted of three dances, her performing in a "yellow, ankle-length dress, with her hair hanging down her back." In her final dance, she hung around the neck of another company member, Clifford, while he swung her - "shades of that red velvet swing."

As per the murder of Stanford White: "Stanny White was killed but my fate was worse. I lived." 

(Evelyn Nesbit Thaw once reported; The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville)

Google book preview on The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville

Florodora and the Chorus Girl

Florodora was a popular show at the Casino Theatre on Broadway in New York, in which Evelyn Nesbit started her career as a chorus girl. Known as a "Floradora Girl", she was billed as Florence Evelyn - her full name being Florence Evelyn Nesbit - and was nicknamed Flossie the Fuss by the other girls, which displeased her. It was then that she declared to further be known as simply Evelyn Nesbit. 

The show itself is a musical comedy considered one the first successful comedies of the 20th century. The New York production ran for 552 performances, and a synopsis of the musical comedy can be read here.

Tell me Pretty Maiden from Florodora (1930)